Computer-Augmented Tableware to Enhance the Eating Experiences
Azusa KADOMURA
1INTRODUCTION

Eating is fun. Historically, human beings have
paid much attention to the process of eating andthe mealtime environment, attempting to enhance
the palatability of food, discover new seasonings, andcreate aesthetic tableware. We aim to make mealtimes more pleasant through the use of technology.
We think that a gamiﬁcation approach using computer technology to make everyday activities fun canbe applied to helping children improve their eatinghabits. In the past, such research has typically focused on food environments, such as dining tables
and dishes [2],[3]. Against this background, we focus on the eating/drinking activity itself, and propose a new approach named EducaTableware (Educate/Tableware) . EducaTableware is computeraugmented tableware that emits sounds when a user
eats or drinks (Figure 1). EducaTableware aims
to enhance human-food interaction using computertechnology, encourage children to eat through gamiﬁcation, and help in dietary education during mealtimes at home.

Figure 1: Overview of2

EducaTableware

PRELIMINARY SURVEY

To better understand the problems on dietary education at home, we sent paper-based questionnaires
to 300 parents of children aged 3-6. 112 parents answered, giving a collection rate of 38%.
As a result, we found that in response to the question Does your child have eating problems? 93.8%
of respondents replied Yes , and over 75% of parents surveyed wanted to improve the child’s eating
habits and over 60% felt that imparting dietary education at home is diﬃcult. This situation motivates
us to contribute to the dietary education of children,
particularly those who fell into the dislikes 1 andunfocused 2 categories. The major answer of eating’s concern was dislikes which was selected by
1 ”The child dislikes certain foods.
2 ”The child cannot concentrate on his/her eating.

(Adviser：Itiro SIIO)
69.5% of the parents. Unfocused was selected by
33.4%. Further, among dislikes , most children
exhibited a stubborn attitude; that is, they disliked
certain foods without ever having tasted them. The
next section describes a design method based on thissummary. Our devices are intended to reduce theburden on parents who do not have enough time andknowledge to impart dietary education.

3DESIGN CONCEPTS

In this section, we describe the design concepts toachieve the goals of EducaTableware .
3.1

Interaction Design

We considered the actions associated with the eating process: spearing food with a fork, moving thefood to the mouth, and biting into (eating) the food.
In this paper, we focused on the biting action since
we thought it was most suited for dietary educationof children: augmenting the spearing or moving actions may encourage a child to merely play with foodwithout eating it.
3.2

Feedback Design

To encourage children to eat through gamiﬁcation,
we decided to generate feedback when a user eats
(bites into) a food. There are several possible typesof feedback, such as visual (e.g., picture/animation),
auditory (e.g., sound/music), and tactile (e.g., vibration). Visual feedback has high expressiveness but
may reduce a child’s focus on eating; in fact, eating in front of visual displays such as a laptop ora TV is a well-known social problem [1]. Tactile
feedback has limited expressiveness and is unlikely toplease children. We thus selected auditory feedback,which is expressive without being distracting. We
pre-recorded two types of sounds: (1) onomatopoeicsounds related to eating (e.g., Paku) that are familiar
to most people in Japan and (2) the sounds/voicesof popular cartoon characters. We can change thesounds easily depending on a child’s preferences. We
prepared about 10 sounds per device in view of thelimited memory size. The system selects a sound toplay on the basis of several parameters (e.g., foodtype) and a random factor to solve the dislikes
problem in the Preliminary Survey, i.e., to motivate
children to eat new foods. Moreover, we believed thatthe system might solve the unfocused problem byattracting children’s attention to the meal. In addition, we believe that auditory feedback is a naturalaccompaniment to dinnertime conversation.
3.3

System Design

To allow the system to be used conveniently at dinnertime, we integrated it into familiar tableware. We

embedded all the electronic components (e.g., a microcomputer, a speaker, and a battery) into a device
for standalone use in the daily environment. We believe that people can easily use our augmented tableware, since they can treat it as normal tableware.

4IMPLEMENTATION

We have developed two kinds of device:
EaTheremin is a fork-type device, which focuseson the eating act, and the cup-type prototype
TeaTheremin , which focuses on the drinking act.
Both prototypes use the same sensing mechanism todetect the moment when a user eats or drinks something(Figure 2). Each device has a pair of electrodes:
EaTheremin uses the fork tines and grip as electrodes and the TeaTheremin uses the cup bottom and grip(Figure 3)/(Figure 4). These devices
detect weak electric current through the human body,foods, and two electrodes. The current varies basedon the resistance values of foods, beverage, and human body. The sounds change in response to these
resistance values.

Figure 2: Sensing method

Figure 4: System Architecture ofTeaThereminchildren’s eating habits can be improved if eﬀective
education tools are provided.

6CONCLUSION

We proposed the EducaTableware approach thatgenerates sounds when a user eats or drinks in orderto encourage good eating habits. We implemented
two devices: EaTheremin , which generates sounds
when a user is eating, and TeaTheremin , whichgenerates sounds when a user is drinking. We successfully conducted an evaluation with children andtheir families with EaTheremin devices. It was
found that users could eat their disliked foods moreeasily than usual, while having fun. Our most important motivation is to make the family smile at dinnerand encourage children to eat healthily and happily.
We believe that providing novel stimuli along withfood, we can encourage children to develop greaterinterest in food.

7

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The author SUPER appreciates the help and advice of Dr. Koji Tsukada at JST.

References[1] Comber, R., Ganglbauer, E., Choi, J. H.-j.,
Hoonhout, J., Rogers, Y., O’Hara, K. and Maitland, J.: Food and interaction design: designing
for food in everyday life, in CHI ’12 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems,
CHI EA ’12 (2012).
Figure 3: System Architecture of5

EaTheremin

USER STUDY

Here, we describe the results of a one-week user
study conducted with three families to evaluate theperformance of our system and explore further usesand enhancements. In summary, although the novelty factor may be partly responsible, our device
was well liked by children and parents through thedays. Through the evaluation result, interview, andrecorded videos, we conﬁrmed that our device had apositive eﬀect on children who were categorized under dislikes and unfocused . We conclude that[2] Lo, J.-L., Lin, T.-Y., Chu, H.-H., Chou, H.-C.,
Chen, J.-H., Hsu, J. Y.-J. and Huang, P.: Playful tray: adopting Ubicomp and persuasive techniques into play-based occupational therapy forreducing poor eating behavior in young children,in Proceedings of the 9th international conference
on Ubiquitous computing, UbiComp ’07 (2007).
[3] Mori, M., Kurihara, K., Tsukada, K. and Siio, I.:Dining Presenter: Augmented Reality system fora dining tabletop, in Proceedings of the 11th international conference on Ubiquitous computing,
UbiComp ’09 (2009).